Mother Dearest

A few years have gone by. Katy left right after school, didn’t look back. Now she’s home again and the first thing waiting is silence. Her mom’s on a plane instead of the couch. Gone. Left her with a stepmom she hardly knows—an older woman whose perfume smells expensive and whose gaze lingers longer than it should. Cindy. Reagan. Whatever. She’s poured two glasses already. The ice cracks. Tension flickers under silk. One drink. Another. The new woman steps closer, asks the usual polite questions, but the smile never quite reaches her eyes. Katy feels it in the base of her spine first: the heat that isn’t motherly, the pull she’s been told not to name. The kitchen lights seem too low, the table too wide, the space between them shrinking with every word left unsaid.